


Because I could not stop for Death

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Civil War, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Illnesses, Romance, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 09:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10511145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: He kindly stopped for me. How the world ends and ends and ends.





	1. Mary von Olnhausen

**Author's Note:**

> Eighteen stories I will not write... but I'll give you a summary and an excerpt from the story that never-will-be.

Mary von Olnhausen dies of typhoid contracted at Mansion House. Jed cannot bear to stay in Virginia and resigns his commission. He flees to Paris to try and reunite with Lisette Beaufort, but she sees he is heart-broken over Mary’s death and sends him away. He haunts the operating theater at the Salpietre and treats a few patients, but spends most of his time injecting morphine and dreaming of another world, gazing at the drawing Lisette gave him and knowing she will not make him another. 

“He left Alexandria behind seeking Paris, lovely, grey-gold Paris, where he thought he could forget his consuming, eroding grief, forgetting that Paris, from cobble to spire, Paris above all cities, would not part lightly with regret…”


	2. Jedediah Foster

Jedediah Foster dies of a morphine overdose in a relapse shortly after his initial sobriety. Mary finds him with the syringe broken in his arm and removes it so no one may suspect. She prepare his body for burial alone and writes a letter to his widow. She does not let herself cry. The mortality rate at Mansion House skyrockets as Hale and Summers try, ineffectively, to cope with the influx of patients. Hale is labeled the Butcher of Alexandria, a title he is both shamed and proud of, and Summers retires abruptly. When Mary contracts typhoid in the summer of 1862, she begs to be sent home but the new chief refuses.

“She wouldn’t let anyone else touch him. She had promised to help him, any way she could, and it seemed that would mean that she alone would dispose of the syringe, remove his blood-stained linen shirt, and bathe the body he’d left behind. His soul had flown and she could not follow…”


	3. Henry Hopkins

Henry Hopkins dies at Ayres farm, shot by a Rebel sniper. There isn’t time for him to utter a word and Emma’s first scream is soundless. She is devastated and cannot sleep, praying through the night for the repose of his soul. She approaches the Mother Superior at Mansion House about becoming a nun, but rejected by the Mother Superior as not having a true vocation. When the War ends, she marries Frank Stringfellow. She never says Henry’s name again.

“ ‘Oh, why not?’ Emma cried, shocked at how much it hurt to be told no, shocked that she was capable of another kind of hurt.

‘Holy Church is not a hidey-hole, a closet to lock yourself into, it is the Way out. You must give your whole self, your whole spirit, and you haven’t found those yet to give. God doesn’t want only your grief, my dear…'”


	4. Emma Green

Emma dies at Ayres Farm, shot by a Rebel sniper. She calls for her mother and reaches for Henry’s face as she bleeds to death in the woods. Henry is consumed by guilt and goes to her family, hoping her brother or father will call him out but only Belinda comes to the door and she doesn’t speak to him. He starts drinking heavily and is dismissed by Major McBurney despite Jed Foster’s protestations. Henry leaves the hospital but doesn’t leave Alexandria and the contraband start to call him the ghost preacher.

“Her last word had not been his name and he wanted to claw at his ears to remove the sound of her soft cry for “Mamma, Mamma” as she’d lifted a hand smeared with her blood to his face. He could not understand how he could wish it had been his name she said, how he could wish for anything but that she had lived…”


	5. Samuel Diggs

Samuel Diggs dies, lynched by three Union officers egged on by Silas Bullen. Jed finds him too late and sits with his body for an hour before he rides back to the hospital to get a wagon to bring Samuel back. Jed becomes an ardent Abolitionist. Mary is taken aback at how driven he is but cannot bring herself to tell him to slow down. They secretly work to make Mansion House a stop on the Underground Railroad and he takes his income from his family’s plantation and gives it to the Freedman’s Society Mary knows in Boston.

“His father’s death had not meant as much to him. It had been a long time coming and enough words had been said. There would never be enough for Samuel Diggs. He understood what Mary had from the start, that Samuel was the best man he would ever know…”


	6. Alice Green

Alice Green dies in a tussle involving a gun when her father attacks Captain van der Berg. Captain van der Berg lives but flees the house and deserts the Army. James Green announces Alice died suddenly of an illness and organizes a swift funeral Jane Green attends drugged with laudanum. The family abandons Alexandria and moves to Texas where Jane’s family lives and Emma joins them, leaving Henry Hopkins a lock of her hair. 

“It had fallen to Belinda to prepare the body, Miz Jane just this side of crazy with grief. Her face had not been marred and Belinda remembered how Alice had looked as a baby, plump cheeks and those golden curls, how she had stamped her feet and run away from Miz Jane’s Persian cat Calpurnia. “Oh, ma chile, ma chile, what troubles you brought on us, what troubles and what mis’ry,” she hummed to herself but as in life, Alice had taken no notice…”


	7. Dr. Summers

Dr. Alfred Summers dies of gangrene when the procedure Mary performs fails to eliminate the infection. Hale assumes command and bullies Jed continuously until Jed resigns his commission, despite Mary imploring him to stay. He leaves abruptly for California after their argument and Mary waits for a telegram that never comes to tell her of his safe arrival in Redwood City.

“She saw his hand, his old man’s hand with its sagging skin like a stretched out glove, the arthritic joints, the stains from tobacco and age, and she regretted she had not cut the whole of it off. If she had wielded the scalpel like a scimitar, like the Hebrews’ God instructed, the man would still be sitting in the parlor at night, able to drink and regard the fiddle he could no longer play. Jed would still be shouting for her from the larger ward, his eyes at odds with his tone, and she could rest easily, knowing his boots were left in the hall to be polished…”


	8. Byron Hale

Byron Hale dies of appendicitis that they all assume is simply bilious dyspepsia. He moans continually until Jed gives him morphine but when he opens the man’s belly, he finds the appendix ruptured and peritonitis already present. Jed manages to close the incision but Byron never wakes. Anne never stops mentioning Byron, working his name or his few bon mots into every conversation, but no one complains. Byron left her nothing, but Mary goes through his things and gives Anne the modest ring she finds. Anne wears it on a chain around her neck. She never marries though she has several proposals before the War is done.

“They said you could tell the time at Mansion House by Nurse Hastings’s mention of his name. “Dear Byron,” meant it was nine o’clock and “Our lamented Dr. Hale,” noon. “Finest physician of his age,” told that supper was due soon and “Captain and Doctor Hale, never forget!” said the clock would strike eleven. “You fool,” “you stupid man,” “my love,” were the signs of three o’clock in the morning, even if no one ever heard…”


	9. Anne Hastings

Anne Hastings dies, poisoned by tainted alcohol. She goes blind first and can only be settled when Mary lets her sniff the oil in the dish or brings the tallow candle to her face, almost close enough to singe her loosened hair. Jed tries to console Hale but to no avail. Nurse Isabella is unofficially told to keep watch over Hale after Anne’s death. Byron Hale can’t function without Anne and drinks too much but not enough to be dismissed, makes surgical errors but not enough to be demoted. He marries the visiting sister of a man he somehow saves from certain death but refuses to ever call his wife, formerly Anne Harkness, anything but Mrs. Hale for the duration of their marriage.

“If he can get just drunk enough, he can convince himself she’s coming soon. That she will walk into the room and begin her latest diatribe against Nurse Mary but with the cadence that said it had taken the place of her bedtime prayers. That she will lay her skirt and bodice over the back of the chair but let her stays fall to the floor, that she will climb into the bed beside him and tell him to ‘shove over, but not too far.’ That she will be there when he wakes, beautiful and his, her eyes narrowed a little and seeing him clearly…”


	10. Clayton McBurney

Major Clayton McBurney dies, jumping from the roof of Mansion House in the throes of an acute paranoid delusional state. His neck is broken with the fall and there is no way to conceal his actions from the Army or his family. Jed insists Byron Hale take the promotion to Chief Medical Officer, to allow Jed more time for scientific research. When Mary falls ill with typhoid, Jed is able to supervise her care without any interruption and she makes a slow but uncomplicated recovery. The first day she is able to return to the wards is the day the papers arrive from California confirming Jed’s divorce. 

“How was the sky so blue and so loud? Where had all the birds come from, the gulls and the sparrows, the eagle that had torn out Prometheus’s liver? There were fourteen steps to the edge of the roof but he could not count how many there would be in the fall, he tried to explain it, but they wouldn’t accept it, wouldn’t let him alone until he found the correct answer…”


	11. Lisette Beaufort

Mlle. Lisette Beaufort dies in Jed’s room, of a sudden collapse. There is no explanation for her death, no reason to imagine a healthy young woman could simply drop dead, and the orderly and Anne Hastings find Jed Foster frantically trying to revive her, her collar opened, her dark hair loose on his pillow, her gold chain tangled in the unraveled braid. There is no way to stop the rumors that collect around him like smoke, the murmur that follows him through the halls. His divorce goes through but he decides not to go to Boston to see Mary, instead sending Samuel as an emissary with the briefest of letters explaining he can never marry her. He resolves to go abroad after the War but not to Paris. 

“What could he write to her—that to marry her was to doom her to a life of whispers? She would never accept it but he could not be responsible for it, for an attachment which lessened her in any way. He dreamt Lisette sat up in the bed they had never shared and wagged one ink-stained finger at him, scolding him “for being _un vrai imbecile_! _Tu l’aimes_ ” but he had not listened to her in life and he could not in death or wherever she was now, alive and dead in his phantasy…”


	12. Matron Brannan

Matron Brannan dies of a broken heart after her son Declan dies. Mary finds her in her bed, a hand at her cheek, and cannot bring herself to wipe away the tears that fall. There is no one to send her body to, no family they can find, so they bury her in the Union graveyard in the finest coffin the Greens make. At the service, when Chaplain Hopkins has finished, Samuel begins to sing “Peggy Gordon” and Byron Hale joins him. Emma lays a posy of white roses on the turned dirt and they walk back to the hospital with the song pacing their footsteps.

“ ‘Oh Peggy Gordon,/ You are my darling,/ Come sit you down upon my knee…’ Samuel began and it was the benediction Matron deserved, Mary thought, her arm securely held by Jed, her black veil floating behind her on the autumn breeze. At the second line, Hale joined in, his tenor soaring, silver to Samuel’s bronze bass, and she felt Jed tighten his hand on her, watching Anne wipe away tears with a black edged handkerchief…”


	13. Jane Green

Jane Green dies of an overdose of laudanum on a late winter night in 1863. Emma still refuses to come home, though she attends the funeral with the Fosters and not Henry Hopkins. Alice blames Belinda for forsaking her mother and starts taking even greater risks as a spy. James is oblivious in his grief, making plans to return to England. Alice follows in the footsteps of Belle Boyd and Antonia Ford and marries the Union officer who arrests her. Her father and brother never speak to her again but Emma writes to her after the War is over. 

“Mary and Dr. Foster are on either side of her. Mary has her arm linked through Emma’s and Emma can feel Jed Foster’s readiness to catch hold of her should she stumble, though she suspects dimly his care is still primarily for his wife and the unborn child barely concealed by the higher waist of Mary’s sober dress. The mourning veil is a distraction and a relief; Emma feels it against her lips, making everything before her an even darker grey than it already was. It cannot alter Alice, however, Alice still vivid and bright, her hair gold beneath the bonnet’s brim, her lips and cheeks rosy. Emma knows she herself is pale and wonders whether Alice has used rouge and why she would wear cosmetics to her mother’s funeral…”


	14. Jimmy Green

Jimmy Green dies in a brawl. James and Jane Green blame each other, unable to broker a peace between themselves. Jane spends hours sitting in Jimmy’s room with his favorite coat spread over her lap. Alice comes to Mansion House to beg Emma to return home. Henry finds Emma in the make-shift chapel, unsure what to do.

“ ‘I know she needs me, but I’m needed here too,” Emma said. “I don’t know, even if I go to her, what shall I say?’

Henry saw her face upturned to his like a flower and considered her question and who she was truly asking—the chaplain, the Union officer, her friend, ally, her lover? She was Jane’s daughter and Jimmy’s sister but she was also Nurse Green and Miss Emma, in Jed’s jovial tone, and every evening they were alone for more than a moment, she was Darling…”


	15. Belinda Gibson

Belinda Gibson dies of an illness she contracts in the contraband camp, shortly after her wedding. Charlotte helps her widower arrange the funeral and lets Emma know that the Greens may come if they stay to the back and don’t interrupt. Jane Green is bereft and Emma tries to console her while she encourages her to attend the service. They listen to the way the hymns are sung for Belinda, with how much pain and how much glory in a sister’s journey to Beulah.

“ ‘Mamma, you’ll make yourself sick,’ Emma repeated, leaving the silk-covered chair to kneel at her mother’s side. ‘She had a little happiness of her own, didn’t she?’

‘A little. It should have been more,’ Jane answered. Her mother was right. What they owed Belinda could never be counted, let alone met…”


	16. Charlotte Jenkins

Charlotte Jenkins dies of an illness contracted at the contraband camp. She refuses to be nursed in the hospital or at the Fosters’ home and dies among her people, each hand held by a woman who knew how to grieve. Samuel can’t bear to stay in Alexandria any longer and leaves right away for medical school in Philadelphia; he gives his address to Mary Foster only. Mary writes to the Freedman’s Society in Boston and another woman agrees to come to take over Charlotte’s position. Samuel marries late and has three sons who all become doctors. He always wishes for a daughter.

“Charlotte didn’t fear death. Samuel had never see someone die as she did, resigned, a little bemused, frustrated she could not continue her work, confident someone would take up where she left off. He would have liked to have held her hand but Ruth had one and Ella the other and she needed them more. He thought of her in when he was in Philadelphia and the bells rang. He imagined she would understand his choice…”


	17. James Green

James Green dies of apoplexy shortly after the tentatively brokered deal with the British falls apart. Jane sends a servant to Mansion House to bring back Emma and whichever doctor can be spared. Emma immediately asks Jed Foster to come with her and they hurry to her home. James is semi-conscious when they arrive and it is quickly clear to Jed that the man will not survive. He administers a small dose of morphine and steps out of the room. James tells Emma she has always been his favorite child and makes her promise to look after Alice and her mother when he is gone. He says nothing of Jimmy and Emma knows not to speak of her brother. When she leaves the room, she finds Jed sitting in the parlor. He tells her the War has not touched California and that his wife could give her family an introduction to society.

“Once he had been the tallest man in the world, the most handsome, the most powerful. Now he was drawn and his right hand trembled while his face sagged unevenly. She knew Dr. Foster was right, that he could not last the night, and she bowed her head in the face of it. She felt his hand on the crown of her head, where once there had been a ragged flower garland of her mother’s prized dahlias and then a silk lined bonnet he’d ordered for her from Paris. She knew she would say yes to whatever he demanded when he began to speak in a low, wavering voice,

‘Dear heart, you must promise me…’”


	18. Silas Bullen

Silas Bullen dies, in any number of ways. His death restores some sense of order to the universe and everyone else lives happily, or nearly so, ever after. 

“He was a man who could not be mourned. Wicked and venal, a hypocrite, a villain, even Henry Hopkins had difficulty mustering up any genuine emotion for the brief service and it was apparent that the nuns themselves relied on their faith alone to give voice to the prayers for the dead. Aurelia Johnson woke up in the morning in Somerville and felt a song rise up in her, a joy she could not account for. She sang until there were no words left, just the notes of a lark and a dove and she held the necklace Samuel had given her in her hand. Caleb smiled and Gabriel asked for corn cakes and molasses; her boy knew it was a day to say yes…”

**Author's Note:**

> I had started writing these AUs where people get shot and I thought, take it one step further. And then, it was the perfect time to use this most famous of Emily Dickinson poems. Get your hankies ready and know that there is at least one bright spot at the end.


End file.
